Saturday, June 11, 2016

Batman: Dead end

Batman Pencil art        As my readers may know I am a major Batman fan. I can remember saving my lunch money all week so I could walk along side three miles of an aqueduct to my Comic book store to buy my favorite title's. Legends of the Dark Night, Batman: Detective Comics, Year one, and of course The Dark Knight Returns. while you read my works you will find a certain flavor of Batman in everything I write.
       It may come to no surprise to you to find out that I am very sensitive to great works of Batman lore, which begs the question...

WHY DID I NEVER KNOW THIS MOVIE EXISTED UNTIL NOW!!!






It's 8 minutes long, just watch it.





     This short film was made in 2003, and use's no computer graphics. The director Sandy Collora spent $35,000 of his own money making this as a show case for his directing talents. He cut his teeth directing commercials, but made this to show producers that he had what it takes to make a feature film.
Lets see...Batman + Joker + ALIENS + PREDATORS!!!

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!! 


     He knew he had one shot to show off, and decided to really put him money to work. He pulled his friends from the top movie creature shops together to pull off the Aliens and Predator's, in fact these are the guys who actually worked on the original creatures from both films! As for Joker, Sandy Collora was looking for the look of Allen Moore's The Killing joke. I think he nailed it.
Art of Joker and Batman from Alan Moores The Killing Joke
Alan Moore's "The  Killing Joke"
Neal Adams art
Neal Adams Batman

As far as Batman's look, Sandy was going for a Neal Adams Batman look. Which he also nailed, the work he did on the mask was amazing and so organic, it looked like Batman's scowl and anger was coming through the mask! And the actor who played Batman was an actual marine who needed no muscle enhancements to fill the suit. However it must be noted Sylvester Stallone was approached to don the cap and cowl first, a part he jumped at. And since Stallone was game, Mark Hamill agreed to be the Joker! Yet as fate would have it, Sly backed out at the last moment, and since Stallone was out...you get the picture. Their loss I say, but Sandys gain also because the guys he got to replace them did an awesome job! (except Mark Hamill...come on...as the Joker?...Mark Hamill?...that would have been...speechless!)




Predator "big Red" From Batman: Dead End
Big red
If Batman: Dead End has any faults it would be that it was too short. but honestly its replay value is pretty high. It was so popular that a major toy company wanted to make a toy of the red Predator and 20th century fox gave them the go ahead.

Sandy Collora spent the next ten years cooling his heel's trying to figure out what he wanted to do and passed up directing...so many films, But decided that he didn't play well with others and self produced another film in 2011 called "Hunter Prey" It went straight to video and you can find that here.

Big props to Sandy Collora for his moxy, watch out for his next movie, which he is working on right now.



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